Just before March Madness, fans of Brigham Young University’s nationally ranked basketball team were crushed when its star forward, Brandon Davies, was benched for having premarital sex with his girlfriend. Davies paid a big price for violating the school’s honor code, losing his shot at a dream season and ultimately withdrawing from BYU after finishing his winter finals.
As the BYU community questioned Davies’ dedication to his faith, the media declared the school’s honor code racist, pointing out that Davies is black and his girlfriend at the time was white. Deadspin dug up troubling statistics showing a majority of BYU’s honor-code violations involve black athletes. Several former BYU football players said that many of their white teammates often broke the honor code but weren’t punished. Either they were never caught or their offenses were purposely overlooked.
